Obama authorizes 1,500 more troops to Iraq

President Barack Obama authorized the US military to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq on Friday. That would nearly double the American military presence in the country. He also requested $5.6 billion for the fight against the Islamic State

The additional troops will expand the military’s role in training
and helping Iraqi forces, focusing on the part of the volatile
Anbar Province that is currently under Islamic State control,
sources told NBC News.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey ‒ and
other high-ranking military officials ‒ have repeatedly warned
that airstrikes will not be enough to defeat the brutal extremist
group in Iraq and Syria.

“No one is under any illusion — under any illusions — that
airstrikes alone will destroy ISIL,” Secretary of Defense
Chuck Hagel told
reporters at the end of September, calling Islamic State by
one of its acronyms, at the end of September. “They are one
element of our broader, comprehensive campaign against
ISIL.”

The president is seeking from Congress a new authorization in the
mission that would allow American troops to use force in Iraq.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the presumed incoming Senate
majority leader, has said he would welcome such a move. The
current bombing campaign, which began three months ago, relies on
the 2001 resolution allowing for the use of military force in the
wake of the September 11 attacks.

The White House will ask Congress for $5.6 billion for the
operations in Iraq and Syria, which includes $1.6 billion for the
new "Iraq Train and Equip Fund," the White House Office of
Management and Budget said.

The US military will establish two new expeditionary
advise-and-assist operations centers outside Baghdad and Erbil.
The troops will train 12 brigades ‒ nine of which will be under
Iraqi army command, while the other three will be Kurdish
peshmerga.

Obama initially
authorized airstrikes in Iraq in August, saying the action
was necessary to protect American personnel. He also noted that
humanitarian air drops were being made to help besieged religious
minorities in the country.

At the time, Islamic State militants had trapped thousands of
Yazidis – an ethnic Kurdish minority – on a mountain in Iraq
where they faced “certain death.”

"I therefore authorized targeted airstrikes if necessary to
help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege at Mount
Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there," Obama said
at the time. "We can act carefully and responsibly to prevent
a potential act of genocide."

From the beginning the president has repeatedly said that there
would not be “boots on the ground” in Iraq, but now there will be
up to 3,000 American troops in the country.

In mid-September, Hagel said US Central
Command announced a plan to take “targeted actions
against ISIS safe havens in Syria,” including striking
infrastructure . The defense secretary also unveiled a plan to
boost Iraqi forces by 1,600 US "military advisers.”

“American forces will not have a combat mission,” Hagel
said. “The troops deployed will support Iraqi and Kurdish
forces.”

As US actions have grown from airstrikes in Iraq to include
Syria, and the number of American troops in Iraq has increased ‒
and is about to double ‒ critics are complaining of mission
creep.

The cost is also growing. A defense spending
expert, Gordon Adams, a professor of US foreign policy at
American University, told Huffington Post at the end of September
that he estimated the United States' war on the militant group
could be costing taxpayers up to $1.5 billion a month.

Despite all efforts, US airstrikes weren’t able to break the
siege of Kobani, Syria, and Kurdish forces there weren’t able to
destroy Islamic State in that region, despite reinforcements from
Iraqi Kurds. Fighting around Kobani continues today.